* * *
Xandor’s muscles burned from the climb up the steep slope of the face of the northernmost mountain in the Hoobla Range. Blisters covered the palms of his hands. But he kept putting one hand and then one foot forward, following Ursula, whose hands fared no better than his.
They’d hadn’t climbed that far up the mountainside when Ursula said, “We’re here.”
Standing next to his companion of many Slides, Xandor looked at the cave entrance and into the darkness and silence beyond.
Ursula handed Xandor the mouse. The creature still did not move. Xandor dropped it into the pouch, not bothering to tighten the drawstring.
Ursula made to enter the cave but stopped, unnaturally still, as soon as she took one step inside. With one foot in the air, she was impossibly balanced on the other. If she were trying to hold that pose of her own accord, she should have toppled over, but she didn’t.
Xandor had seen the effects of magic often enough to recognize them now. Ursula had entered a field of paralyzing or similar magic. In a panic, he grabbed her wrist and pulled. She fell back in his arms, limp. Carefully he laid her on the rocky ground.
She gasped and sat up. “What happened?”
“Magic,” Xandor replied. “Wait here. I’m going in. If I freeze, try to pull me free. Whatever you do, don’t go in again.”
But Jenna’s magic did not stop him. She’d made a contingency for him as he knew she would. He ran his father’s sword through the back of the paralyzed hoobla barbarian, who didn’t fall over or bleed, even when Xandor withdrew his blade. He’d always expected his first combat to be more confrontational, and he didn’t feel like a great warrior for striking the blow, but he instinctively knew that if he didn’t dispatch the hoobla now, he’d regret it later. It had been caught in Jenna’s magical field just as Ursula had been and might also be freed of it at any moment.
Xandor lifted the motionless Jenna from the straw and carried her outside. Then he untied her and pried a silver feather from her grip. From inside the cave came a gurgling and the sound of a body collapsing to the floor.
Jenna’s eyes fluttered. She squinted up at Xandor. “I knew you would come,” she whispered.
“I should have waited for you,” he replied, fighting back the tears. Great warriors didn’t cry.